The Southern Border Is Fine (1)
The next morning.
"Welcome to the Crossline Kingdom."
Thwack.
The sound of a stamp coming down rang out from my desk for the first time in a long while.
"Excellent. Next!"
The border never changes.
No matter how the world turns, one of the most rigorously maintained institutions anywhere remains the immigration inspection. Which means that whatever I'd been through over the past few days, I could never let it make me forget my true calling.
That's right. This is where I belong.
Fidgeting with my entry stamp, I felt an odd wave of relief wash over me. It finally felt like things were settling back into their everyday rhythm. The Immigration Management Office does not change. That, I suspect, will remain an immutable law.
But if something had changed—
"...Hm."
It was the people.
I glanced back over my shoulder. In one corner of the office, hood pulled deep over her face, Elaine was quietly watching the whole scene unfold.
When I gave a small nod, she nodded back in turn, a glint of green catching the light in her eyes. And on her chest, a hastily made name tag swayed gently.
— Honorary Observer —
A position thrown together as quickly as the badge itself. Unlike Erzena, who had by now carved out a place for herself as the office's official morale-and-fatigue officer, Elaine was still too new to be entrusted with anything. For the time being, simply watching would broaden her horizons.
It was a fine opportunity to show her just how many races shared this world—and how each of them ought to be treated.
Better make it a good show, then.
And sure enough, everything seemed to be new to Elaine. Her eyes darted every which way, sparkling with a restless mix of curiosity and nerves.
I turned back to the long line stretched out before me and called out.
"Next!"
"Oi!"
The answer came back at once.
"How in the blazes are there this many humans? Am I s'posed ta enter or not?"
A grumbling man's voice. But something was off.
"...Applicant? Where are you, exactly?"
"Surface-dwellers, eyes wide open and still can't see a thing, eh?"
I could hear the voice, but there was no one to be seen.
What the—?
Flustered, I looked around. But there was nobody in front of my desk.
"Oi! Down HERE! Cast yer eyes down a bit, will ya."
"Ah."
Following the voice downward, I finally realized a man barely half my height was standing right at the desk. A squat, stocky frame, a shaggy beard hanging down to his knees—and, in contrast, brawny slabs of muscle, clad in what looked for all the world like a miner's work clothes.
The moment I took in that figure, I knew what he was.
"A Dwarf..."
The short-folk race.
The Dwarf, wearing a helmet that looked solid enough to stop a pickaxe head-on, muttered on.
"Live with yer eyes fixed straight ahead and ye'll end up brained on a rock spur. Look DOWN once in a while, why don't ye."
A gruff, rough-hewn common tongue came rasping out from behind the beard. That clipped, blunt pronunciation was oddly refreshing, actually.
Still, for a race of small stature, being overlooked must indeed have felt like an insult.
"My apologies. Dwarves rarely come through the Southern Border, so I've committed a discourtesy."
With that brief apology, I set the hourglass back on my desk, flipped.
"State your place of origin, your name, and your purpose of visit. You have five minutes."
"Five minutes? Fair enough."
He planted both feet shoulder-width apart and squared himself at once.
"Name's Batan Glimrock. Second son o' Chepa Glimrock, the great miner, that be."
The hand that had been stroking his beard swept down to point at the ground beneath his own feet.
"I come from down there, under the earth."
"..."
Yes, thank you, everyone can see that. You're radiating born-underground energy from every pore of your body.
And where under the earth, exactly, was I supposed to divine from that?
Somehow keeping the smile on my face, I said, "I'd be grateful if you could be a little more specific about your origin."
"Ye ever heard tell o' Undermine? Maybe ye have, maybe ye haven't, hrm."
Undermine.
Not a name I was hearing for the first time. The ancestral home of the Dwarves—and a hidden city no other race had yet discovered.
But something didn't add up.
Undermine isn't in the south. It's somewhere beneath the great mountain range.
The Dwarven homeland lay beneath the Urakaras Mountains—the colossal range that anchored the very center of the continent, dividing the world neatly into four. What was more, the southern reaches of the continent were almost entirely flat plain. No mountains meant no rich veins of ore, and where there was no ore, there was rarely any reason for a miner race to come.
And yet here stood this dwarf called Batan, caked head to toe in dirt and dust, right in front of me.
Most Dwarves operate near the Western Active Volcano Region. So why is he here?
A prickle of incongruity. The pieces refused to fit together.
"Hrmmm..."
And there was still one answer I hadn't heard yet.
"What brings you here, may I ask?"
"Surface-folk, sharp eyes and all, still can't see it? What reason's an underground man got for climbin' up top? There's exactly ONE."
He rummaged in his pocket and held something up before me—something caked thick with dirt.
A green stone emerged, flashing brilliant light as it caught the morning sun.
Twinkle, twinkle.
An emerald.
"Ooooh..."
From far across the room, a pair of eyes the very same shade of green lit up with curiosity.
A gemstone, then.
The emblem of the Dwarven people, the crystallization of their racial desire—there it sat in his hand.
"Word come round that a new vein'd been struck down south, so I've slaved half a year in this ugly dirt for it, I have."
As a rule, Dwarves would sooner gnaw off their own beards than leave their homeland. The pride of living beneath the earth, the artisan's pride handed down through generations, and the mountains' endless bounty of ore—to leave Undermine was to abandon all of it and climb alone into the open light of the surface.
But there are always exceptions. Eccentrics who roamed the wider world hunting gems and metals that didn't lie in their home range's mines. It was thanks to precisely such Dwarves that the rest of the continent had ever learned of their existence in the first place.
I suppose he's one of that lot.
As if to confirm my thinking, he went on.
"Mined the vein clean out, figured it's high time I headed home."
And Dwarves were tens of times more skilled than any human miner at reading tunnels and veins. Even alone, he could strip a lode bare in the blink of an eye.
Then the story holds together.
An eccentric Dwarf. A verified birthplace. Belongings and purpose in agreement.
I said, "Do you happen to be carrying other gemstones besides?"
"Course I am. Ye think I crossed the whole south for ONE rock?"
He twisted around and hefted the enormous sack slung across his back.
"Got a whole mountain o' 'em in here, I do."
Packed tight inside, raw stones of every hue threw off their colors.
I snapped my fingers at once.
"Attendant."
"Yes. Ready."
My personal aide came hurrying over carrying a small wooden box.
"Applicant, if you would place all the gemstones you've brought into this box, we'd be much obliged."
"Eh? What's all this, then?"
"There will be a brief inspection."
Precious metals, minerals, and gemstones were all handled as specially controlled goods. Precious metals, as high-value commodities, had to be checked for stolen provenance. Minerals, as strategic materials, were among the items requiring reports to the Intelligence Department. And gemstones above all—resonant with mana as they were, they served as core components of artifacts and magic tools, and were treated as critical goods for that reason.
Which meant their type, quantity, and route of transport always had to be verified.
"Hrmph..."
Batan stroked his beard, looking distinctly put out. But before long, he gave a nod.
"...Ye best not so much as SCRATCH 'em, mind."
"We'll handle them with the utmost care."
At my courteous reply, the Dwarf—still radiating distrust—finally tipped the sack's contents into the box.
Clatter-rattle!
Dozens of raw stones tumbled in, each one the size of a fist.
My attendant let out a gasp of admiration.
"Whoa..."
Sell any single one of those, and it would probably outstrip a month of our combined salaries.
Carrying all that around by himself, loose in a sack. Is that courage, or a complete ignorance of how the world works?
It struck me anew just how different the Dwarves' underground common sense was from our own.
Once every stone from the sack sat in the box, my aide carried it straight over to the Touch Officer.
"Touch Officer. Requesting gemstone verification."
"Oh my. Aren't these pretty."
The Touch Officer's eyes went round, and he sent tentacles snaking out to glide over the stones one by one, murmuring as he went.
"Emerald, sapphire, opal, amethyst—goodness, there's even a rub—"
That was the moment.
"...Hm?"
He froze. Lifting the last remaining stone, he stared at it for a long, long while.
A single stone of vivid crimson, clear as blood—fatally, dangerously beautiful. It was unlike any of the others. As if someone had shaped it by hand, it sat in a teardrop form of impossibly smooth curves.
The Touch Officer murmured, his face gone grave.
"This isn't a ruby. It's a Blood Diamond."
A Blood Diamond.
At those words, my brow furrowed.
Oh, damn it all.
An extraordinarily rare gem—and, at the same time, an extraordinarily dangerous one, used as a catalyst for blood magic. It fell squarely under the list of items banned from entry.
"I'm sorry to inform you, but one of your possessions violates our entry regulations."
"WHAT did ye say!? What in the—what kind o' nonsense is that!?"
Batan shouted, jolted wide awake.
"A Blood Diamond. This is a Class-1 restricted item. It carries danger on par with unlicensed artifacts. Without proper disposal measures, it constitutes a serious threat to border security."
I recited the regulation for him.
"Accordingly, the item will be confiscated, and a short interrogation will follow. Do you consent?"
Why that stone had ended up in his hands, where he'd obtained it, and whom he meant to deliver it to. We would take our time hearing all of it, calmly.
But the dwarf's reaction was fiercer than I'd expected.
"Don't make me laugh! Ye just want the pretty rock for yer own, don't deny it!"
"Hk—!"
At the sudden outburst, Elaine flinched hard, yanked her hood down deeper, and shrank further into her corner. The wariness that had only just begun to ebb away shot right back up to full height.
Seeing that, my expression hardened.
"...Please compose yourself. No one said any such thing. And lower your voice."
"Then what IS it? Why're ye tryin' ta rob a Dwarf o' gems we bled sweat to dig out o' the earth!?"
Ah.
There it was. That unmistakably Dwarven racial greed.
They had lived so long in isolation beneath the ground that they'd had almost no contact with other cultures—and at the same time, they were a people bound together by an endless, bottomless hunger for metal and stone. Right now, he truly believed I coveted this Blood Diamond for myself.
The mood was souring by the second.
"...We're not getting anywhere, are we."
"Surface-folk, always the problem, always!"
My eyes met my aide's. He spoke with his gaze alone.
Shall we arrest him?
Hold just a moment.
Let's think this through.
Getting angry was only natural. A Dwarf coveting gemstones was simply the way of things.
But then why did he walk straight up to our border, carrying a banned item, in broad daylight?
That was exactly where the strangeness lay.
Smuggling?
I narrowed my eyes and studied the Dwarf.
There were hardly any smugglers left at the Southern Border anymore. I had ripped the trade out by the roots four years ago. The occasional bold soul still tried—and every one of them was by now either executed or rotting in a cell.
Could this Dwarf be one of them?
No. If that were the plan, he'd never have handed it over this easily.
Someone with that in mind would have tried to conceal it from the start, or surrendered every raw stone except that one.
I looked Batan over, carefully.
"Now what's the meaning o' this? Ye said ye'd inspect it and hand it back, so hand it back!"
His face was pure, uncut bewilderment.
Smugglers never travel alone. They come in pairs at minimum, loaded with decoy goods to hide behind, in noisy packs.
Not a smuggler. Far too clumsy for it.
So I turned to other possibilities. Simple carelessness. Ignorance of the regulations.
Or...
Not smuggling by his own will—but a job someone had put him up to.
That last suspicion weighed heaviest of all.
I need to dig for more.
I slowly gathered my focus. And a moment later, a voice like a mouthful of dust and gravel came out of mine.
"Khashilla de meta i allagas diaka." — "Shall we set our tempers down and talk this through, friend?"
"Eh?"
He froze mid-breath, then stared at me with eyes gone enormous.
"...Wha?"
At my sudden transformation, Elaine tilted her head from across the room, looking fascinated.
"Maka dum? Hruashil beta de Unter-mine?" — "What's this, then? You're not from Undermine yourself, are ye?"
The Dwarf turned noticeably, dramatically friendly.
"Well I'll be! Never knew there was an Undermine man among the humans! Were yer parents short-folk, then?"
"Excuse me?"
He was spouting assumptions so unfiltered even I was caught off guard.
I continued in the Dwarven tongue.
"Nothing of the sort. But I know full well how much labor your people pour into digging gems this beautiful. It's only natural that anyone would covet them—so I'll admit it plainly. Yes, I felt a flicker of greed myself."
A Merchant's Secret Technique: Feed the Need for Recognition.
The soul of the service trade lies in making the customer feel ten feet tall. And for a gruff, flinty Dwarf, there was nothing sweeter this side of ale.
"Hah! This one knows a thing or two, he does. Nine in ten humans haven't the faintest idea what we go through."
"Which is exactly my point... You know as well as I do that this Blood Diamond is a dangerous mineral. Dangerous enough that it demands special handling."
"Aye, that I do know. That I do..."
When a man's mood thaws, his guard thaws with it. And when the guard comes down, whatever he's been hiding comes spilling out with hardly a shove.
Batan scratched at his beard and said, "See... word was, there's a fella willin' ta trade me mithril for this here stone. Figured so long as I kept it careful, all'd be well. It's safe in Dwarf hands, after all."
There it was. The truth, at last.
"Quite right. Your race is more than capable of handling gemstones safely. But tell me—what if, through some accident, this stone passed into the hands of another race? What if it passed into the hands of an evil man?"
"Oof, that'd be a right mess. Can't have that, can we. A bonnie lass like this, rolled through the mud? Never."
"Precisely. That is why our kingdom takes measures like these."
I drew his agreement out naturally, then laid out our side of the arrangement.
"We will contact the kingdom's Academy of Sorcery, place the stone under proper safeguards, and then return it to you. You have my word as the officer of this post."
For the Academy, laying a tracking spell on such a sinister gem would be trivial work. If this really was a smuggling scheme dressed up in a naive Dwarf, then the answer wasn't to slam the door in his face—it was to catch the buyer on the other end. Layer a mana-nullification charm over it on top of that, and in the end the thing would be nothing more than a pretty rock.
Never leave loose threads behind. And I'll be finding this buyer of ours, too.
A task that had to be stamped out completely—at the very least, within the Southern Border.
"Stay at the border for a few days, and it will all be settled."
"Hrrmmph... ohh, fine, FINE! Any man who speaks my mother tongue, how'm I not ta trust him."
The Dwarf finally relented.
"Excellent. Then let's proceed at once."
I lifted my stamp with a flourish and said, "Batan Glimrock of the Dwarves. You were found carrying an item restricted from entry—but this office has judged it a simple mistake born of unfamiliarity with our regulations, and notes your fully cooperative attitude throughout. You are therefore recognized as having respected, and faithfully complied with, the inspection process of this kingdom."
I ran my eyes down his entry paperwork. No issues.
"Welcome to the Crossline Kingdom."
THWACK!
The stamp came down, [ENTRY PERMITTED] blooming crisp and clear across the document. Beside it, I scrawled a small note in pen:
[TRACKING REQUESTED]
"Return to this office in one week. By then, everything will be taken care of."
My attendant, quick on the uptake, quietly slipped the entry paperwork into an envelope marked [FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS DISPATCH].
"Then happy diggin', human friend! See ye in a week's time!"
And with a wave of his hand, the dwarf scurried out of the Entry Management Office at a quick trot.
Watching his figure recede into the distance, I murmured, "A Blood Diamond... who on earth wanted to buy this thing?"
A faint worry crept over me. Whoever sought a stone this valuable as a collector's piece—and this dangerous—was no ordinary citizen.
"Hm."
I hoped it was worry over nothing. But the feeling wouldn't sit right.
Like the calm before a storm. Like something was about to come sweeping down on this perfectly uneventful Entry Management Office of ours, at any moment now.
Not more, not less—just sixty peaceful days. That's all I'm asking for.
Muttering it under my breath, I turned my head.
"Next!"
And all the while, Elaine was watching me with an utterly serious expression.
[The world... is a harsh place, isn't it.]
A small monologue—pointed in precisely the opposite direction of all my hopes—scattered and faded into the bustle of the crowded Entry Management Office.